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Jake Gyllenhaal playing intense role in ‘Nightcrawler’.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Nightcrawler’ is
pulse-pounding thriller set in nocturnal underbelly of contemporary Los
Angeles. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Lou Bloom, a driven young man desperate for
work who discover the high-speed world of L.A. crime journalism. Finding a
group of freelance camera crews who film crashes, fires, murder and other
mayhem, Lou muscles into the cut-throat, dangerous realm of nightcrawling-
where each police siren wail equals a possible windfall and victims are
converted into dollars and cents. Aided by Rene
Russo as Nina, a veteran of the blood-sport that is local TV news, Lou
blurs the line between observer and participant to become the stars of his own
story. Written and directed by Dan
Gilroy, the likes of BillPaxton and RizAhmed co-star in the
film.

I understand
Lou’s appearance wasn’t actually stipulated in the script. Lou being wide-eyed
and emaciated was something you came up with after reading the script and
having discussion with Dan Gilroy..?

It
wasn’t in the script, but when I met with Dan..There were lot of references in
the script to coyotes, and growing up in Los Angeles, something about Lou
reminded me of a coyote. I can’t really explain to you what the first instinct
was about that, but I can say that while I was reading it, I had this feeling that
Lou was the type of person who was hungry. And when I met with Dan we talked
about how Los Angeles is in the middle of a desert, and that’s sort of ignored
(laughs), but it is. And at night theses wild animals come out and they start
searching for food. Anyone who’s spent time in Los Angeles will tell you that
at night, specially if you’re in the hills, you’ll inevitably hear coyote
attaching some other animal or you’ll hear them howling. And when Dan and I
were talking about it, it hit me and him that Lou was a coyote in a way. In
fact , there were times when we thought we weren’t going to be able to get the
title ‘Nightcrawler,’ and we thought we might title the movie ‘Coyote’
(laughs).

So the
essence of him was that he’s coyote, he’s hungry. You see them pouncing along
the street and they look like they’ll eat anything, any scrap they could find.
They smell blood and they’ll move to it …and that’s Lou. So I did make myself
like a coyote and made myself hungry and I lost weight. I would run at night for
a long time, for 8-15 miles. I’d run to set sometimes and I ended up isolating
myself over a period of time, because that’s what they are like. They work in
packs but they’re mostly alone, and even that. He’s preying on desperate people
and that was that.

Seeing
as ‘Nightcrawler’ is et in the world of stringers, was that something you came
across when you were researching ‘End of Watch,’ when you were delving into the
world of an LAPD officer? And was that world of “nightcrawlers” something you
were of before delving into this film?

When I
was doing ‘End of Watch,’ we were with police officers on the streets of South
Central LA two or three times a week for four months, Michael Pena and I. And
when we would go to crime scenes or accidents with police officers, there would
sometimes be these guys from the local news videotaping things. In fact, there
was a couple of times where Michael and I, our publicist would get a call like,
“What is Jake Gyllenhaal doing at a crime scene?” (laughs). So I would see
those guys, and growing up in Los Angeles I had seen them, but I had never
really registered them. I didn’t really know that much about them until I
started researching for ‘Nightcrawler.’

The film’s about the world of stringers in Los Angeles, the world of videoing
and covering crime scenes—the guys who are non-union and work during the night
time. They chase tragedy, and they try to find the most heinous, disturbing
things that can be the most shocking to the audience when they watch the news
in the morning. But the story is really about this guy Lou Bloom, who’s a bit
of a wanderer, and he’s at an accident scene and he watches these guys do what
they do and he decides to do it himself. Really it’s about the birth of an
entrepreneur, that’s the way I try to look at it.

Did you
shadow stringers for ‘Nightcrawler.’

I did, it was this set of brothers who are well known. But I went with
them and Dan and Robert Elswit our cinematographer. We followed them around for
a few nights. It’s interesting because this movie, I say that it’s a birth of
an entrepreneur, but I also think its birth of a cinematographer because he’s a
cameraman. So, to be here with the cinematographer in the research phase was
fascinating. And Robert is actually my Godfather, so that was very interesting
(laughs). It’s was very familiar.

And I’m
guessing the guys you shadowed weren’t as unhinged and sociopathic as Lou?

No (laughs). They’re good dudes, very different to Lou. But they do walk
this moralistic line of when do you intervene, and do you? Because that means
money. And I talked to them about that a lot. I wasn’t interested in that
aspect for the character because he’s not interested in that, but I was
interested as a human being. And they told me about a number of times that they
helped people, you know? And most of the time they’re there after the fact, so
they’re not in that situation.

You’ve
made some really interesting choices as actor lately, with this ‘Enemy,’ and
‘Prisoners,’ and then upcoming ‘Everest’ and ‘Southpaw.’ I can imagine there
are a number of factors, but what is it about a project that makes you want to
jump on-board?

It’s ever changing for me. There’s no real answer to why I pick
something. I have no plan. Sometimes I’m moved by the human being who wants to
tell the story, sometimes something connected to me with them for some reason.
When I met Denis Villeneuve before e did ‘Enemy,’ we sat down…and the script, I
didn’t totally understand. It was a Spanish translation into English, and there
were things and concepts that I thought were really beautiful about it, but I
didn’t know at that time exactly what he was saying. When I sat down and I had
my first meeting with him I went, “Oh, the universe is telling me I have to
make movie with this guy. We’re of like minds, and that’s it.” So I just dove
into the unknown with him, and that spawned a relationship that then spawned
anther movie, ‘Prisoners.’ I think it’s feeling. You’re an artist, and that’s
about feelings, you know (laughs)? So you have to trust that.

You
immersed yourself in this ‘Nightcrawler’ character for a number of months. Was
it easy to leave behind when you wrapped?

I love this character, and that will sound sick to anyone who watches that
movie (laughs). But maybe that’s because I loved the process and I loved Dan
Gilroy and I love the script. I think he’s made an extraordinary film, so part
of me is always there, but now he’s fully gone. It does take a couple months to
fully flush out, but after a while it’s gone. But I do really love the
character. When I would finish shooting a scene or I’d worked on a monologue
for a long time, I would always be so sad because they were so well written,
and I’d think to myself, “I don’t know when I’ll next be able to say words that
are this well written.” But at the time it does effect you you. We shot the
whole movie at night, so we weren’t really sleeping a lot.

There were a lot of preparations because there were a lot of great
words. There was just great dialogue that was written on the page. And I
memorized it like a play. I spent hours upon hours walking down streets
memorizing the lines, because he has these great soliloquies and monologues. I
remember like early on, four months before, when I was on the streets in New
York City running the lines trying to get them, like getting three lines at a
time. And I remember hitting a run on the west side highway and being
like..”Excuse me sir, I’m looking for a job..I’m trying to find a career to
learn. I’m going to said..” “What I said, I what? (Laughs). It was like that
for months. And then, it was something that started to feed into my soul a
little bit, and into my bones. And, the way he talked, the first line he has
is, “I’m under the option that this is a detour.” Nobody talks like that, you
know that sort of word choices became a part of me and I started losing weight
and I started working with Dan and we started rehearsing with everybody and he
became, he sort of grew up out of the Earth. But then you have to move on when
it’s over.

After Playing such an intense
role, do you need to take a break before taking on another one?

I do, but
sometimes you don’t get the shot (laughs). After this movie, it took me a
little bit of time, but I went into ‘Everest,’ which is about the tragic
expedition in 1996. But that was strangely cathartic because we were out in
nature and I was just excited to be eating (laughs). To shake off the
character, that takes awhile. After ‘Everest’ I did ‘Southpaw’ with Antoine
Fuqua, and I spent six months training for that movie…and then I just started a
movie with Jean-Marc Vallee and I had two weeks between. When you finish, even
though you explore a side or a piece inside of yourself that you have to pull
back out, it’s like steering a ship like you were in a storm and one the sky is
clear and you’re like, “Well, OK. We’re headed that way now.” You just roll
with it, but it does to a few weeks to flush out for me.